Using virtual-reality goggles, a camera and a stick, scientists have induced out-of-body experiences — the sensation of drifting outside of one’s own body — in ordinary, healthy people, according to studies being published today in the journal Science.

The research reveals that “the sense of having a body, of being in a bodily self,” is actually constructed from multiple sensory streams, which include vision, touch, balance and the sense of where one’s body is positioned in space. But when the information coming from the sensory sources does not match up, the sense of being embodied as a whole comes apart.

The brain, which abhors ambiguity, then forces a decision that can, as the new experiments show, involve the sense of being in a different body.